Why AI will never eliminate the need for pharmacists

The pandemic made room for technological advancements in healthcare. The strain of COVID on frontline workers, and on existing systems used to treat, support and serve patients, has prompted the development of new technology to assist and meet the complex job demands.

AI chatbots and tech like ChatGPT can handle tasks like answering insurance claims, among other tasks, which allows physicians to spend their time on patient-focused tasks. Because of AI’s potential, it is tempting to believe that at some point it will be able to complete tasks without the need for human effort or input.

But artificial intelligence will never eliminate the need for pharmacists, even with recent developments in AI’s capabilities, said Sam Anderegg, CEO of pharmacy information technology company DocStation.

Healthcare IT News We sat down with Anderegg to find out why he believes this, and what the future holds for AI and pharmacy.

Q. You advocate for how technology can enhance healthcare, yet you caution against healthcare professionals putting too much stock in artificial intelligence. What balance are you trying to strike here?

One. Artificial Intelligence has the amazing potential to transform almost every industry imaginable. Right now, we’re seeing the power of consumer tools like ChatGPT that make our day-to-day lives easier by digesting massive amounts of data on the Internet to answer complex questions and draft useful summaries, articles, emails and itineraries. are making.

We are seeing AI playing a role in businesses, taking minutes for virtual meetings and suggesting targeted ads based on our interactions with social media posts and content.

The Silicon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things” is great for building marketing or e-commerce companies. But when you break things down in a healthcare context, the consequences can be harmful, such as misdiagnosing, creating medication errors, or, most serious of all, putting a patient’s life at risk.

Getting it wrong can result in harm, adverse outcomes or high costs to the patient. The exciting thing is when we get it right. There is a lot of manual, laborious, administrative work in the healthcare process that diminishes our ability to maximize time on the things we as physicians can do and only do what we can.

Just as it is helping to make our lives easier at home and at work, AI can reduce or improve the small, non-clinical tasks that are currently part of our day-to-day work , so that we can spend more time. Doing the things we love and were trained to do – taking care of patients. Using AI to enhance patient care and improve the patient/provider experience is the holy grail.

However, we must be cautious, careful and responsible about how we leverage AI more than other industries in order to minimize the risk and potential for loss.

Q. You cautioned healthcare executives not to think that AI can replace pharmacists. Why can’t AI do such a feat?

One. There are many traditional pharmacy functions that have the potential to be converted to artificial intelligence. What people forget is that the role of the pharmacist in the healthcare team is rapidly evolving.

At the turn of the century, most vaccines were distributed in primary care clinics. More than 20 years later, during the pandemic, more than three-quarters of people now receive vaccinations at pharmacies.

Healthcare is increasingly shifting to convenient and accessible retail healthcare locations, and pharmacies are at the forefront of this change. In response, the pharmacy practice model is evolving to be more service-oriented.

Pharmacists are now taking on a mid-level provider role in the healthcare team and are in an ideal position to address care issues, particularly in rural and under-served areas. At the same time, patients value the human touch provided by pharmacists just as much as they do their PCPs.

While AI may be able to provide information, it cannot provide the same level of understanding and problem-solving as a human pharmacist. Using this frame of reference, we can think about AI affecting the role of pharmacists in much the same way we think about affecting the role of primary care providers.

While AI has the potential to enhance pieces of the care delivery process, patients still need a healthcare professional to communicate, educate and guide them on their healthcare journey. Pharmacists are often the most accessible, frequently visited providers on the health care team.

Patients and the healthcare industry will continue to rely on pharmacists to play a role as a frontline care provider and trusted patient advocate.

Q. So, what can AI do to help pharmacists do their jobs better and more efficiently?

One. Like other healthcare providers, artificial intelligence has the potential to make pharmacists’ jobs easier and better by automating administrative tasks and enhancing the patient care process.

The first potential application is making administrative tasks and tasks provided by support staff both faster and easier. During the pandemic, many pharmacies adopted software to schedule appointments for vaccinations and other services.

There are now a number of AI-assisted chat services that can help assist patients with non-clinical tasks such as scheduling appointments, initiating medication refills and reaching out to follow up with patients.

As pharmacy evolves from dispensing drugs to providing services, there are many applications around the medical billing and revenue cycle process that can be improved by AI. When billing is done manually by support staff, errors happen, resulting in delay or denial of reimbursement.

Automation can help eliminate errors by flagging incomplete or incorrect information before a claim is submitted. This can reduce the number of denied claims, make the billing process more efficient, and maximize potential revenue.

Leveraging these tools to perform administrative tasks is generally less risky, but helps to simplify extremely inefficient and cumbersome procedures without the risk of errors or patient harm.

Pharmacies are also in the business of collaborating with payers in value-based arrangements to improve clinical outcomes.

While many software vendors and tools leverage basic logic (for example, if/then decision trees) to identify patients at risk, AI has the potential to predict patients at risk sooner. . For example, if a patient is filling prescriptions regularly and starts taking their medications later than expected in consecutive months, the AI ​​can identify this trend towards non-adherence, summarizing the information and present it to the pharmacist for evaluation and patient access. Warrant.

Such applications can prevent adverse events, improve patient outcomes and save the health care system money.

Just as AI reads large amounts of information and creates a vacation itinerary, it can also be used to summarize medical information such as diagnosis, allergies, lab values, treatment history, progress notes, etc. Automate documentation, identify potential diagnoses, or suggest potential treatments.

A relatively benign example would be recommending the cheapest drug option considering the drug formulary used for a particular patient’s pharmacy/medical coverage.

While leveraging AI for clinical use cases will be a significant leap forward, it is likely that there will be information that is not connected to or considered by AI that may pose a risk.

This is why there remains a need for pharmacists and other providers to evaluate recommendations for safety, efficacy, appropriateness from a holistic perspective before implementing the recommendation.

These examples only scratch the surface of how AI can make a pharmacist’s job and day-to-day responsibilities easier, more efficient, and more fulfilling in the near term.

Q. What are the legal and ethical considerations that pharmacologists argue AI will have trouble managing?

One. The first is the legal and ethical consideration that pharmacists and other providers need to be aware of for potential bias identified with the use of artificial intelligence in the health care setting. AI algorithms are trained using historical data, which may be inherently biased due to the lack of access to healthcare in underserved populations.

Without adequate access to healthcare, under-served populations may not be diagnosed or receive the same treatment as other populations with a similar medical risk profile. It is important for pharmacists and other providers to understand how AI algorithms are developed and trained, and how quality assurance is performed to understand potential bias.

It is also extremely important for providers to understand the risk of error in clinical applications of AI. While AI has the potential to make clinical recommendations, algorithms may not have access to the critical information needed to make “informed” decisions about treatment regimens.

A serious adverse consequence could be providers relying too much, or even blindly, on AI to make treatment decisions. As providers we have an ethical responsibility to “do no harm”. It is important for pharmacists to understand the potential for harm when relying on AI to enhance clinical decision making.

Another consideration that may not be clear is patient consent. Using AI, especially in healthcare settings, is still highly experimental. Thinking about it in context makes it easier to compare the clinical trial space.

Just as patients understand the potential risks and benefits of participating in a clinical trial involving a new treatment, patients and their providers must understand the risks and benefits of using AI as part of their healthcare experience. The technology industry is generally characterized as an unregulated space based on the rate of innovation compared to the policy making process. (Think cryptocurrency regulation in the finance industry.)

To “do no harm,” it is part of our responsibility to apply the same informed consent practices with AI that we use in other areas of the healthcare industry.

Follow Bill’s HIT coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Siwicki
Email the author: bsiwicki@himss.org
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